Bound by the Weakest Link: A Systemic-Fidelity Framework for Competency-Based Curriculum Implementation in Resource-Constrained Education Systems

Résumé fourni par la source

Competency-based curriculum (CBC) reforms have spread rapidly across the Global South, yet routinely underdeliver in resource-constrained education systems, where sound policy coexists with under-prepared teachers and inadequate facilities. Explanations tend to isolate a single culprit — policy incoherence, teacher unpreparedness or infrastructure deficits — and so cannot account for why reforms stall even when one or two conditions are met. This article develops an integrative theoretical framework, termed Systemic Fidelity, that reconceptualises CBC implementation as a property of an interdependent system rather than of any single reform strand. Drawing together systems theory and loose coupling, implementation-fidelity theory, Fullan's account of educational change, human-capital theory and the capability approach, the framework advances two core principles: implementation fidelity depends on the alignment among three subsystems (curriculum policy, human capacity and material infrastructure); and fidelity is bounded by the least-developed subsystem, the binding constraint, so that returns rise most from strengthening the weakest link. The framework yields testable propositions on interdependence, the design-enactment gap, capacity depth, loose coupling and sequencing, and it specifies boundary conditions and contextual moderators including leadership, culture, incentives and political economy. A secondary-data illustration from Kenya's CBC demonstrates the framework's diagnostic value, and a school-level assessment protocol is proposed to operationalise the diagnostic. The article offers a parsimonious, testable account of why competency-based reforms succeed or stall in low-resource settings, with implications for research and policy — notably that scarce resources should be directed first to the binding constraint.